LONDON, England, April 4, 2005 — The Codex Sinaiticus-believed to be the oldest Bible in the world-could soon be available to readers around the globe, thanks to an unprecedented, international collaborative effort and the use of up-to-the-minute technology.
The Codex is a handwritten, Greek manuscript containing both the Old and New Testaments. Considered to have been written by three scribes, it is the earliest known surviving manuscript that encompassed in one volume all of the texts that make up the Christian Bible. It dates from the time of Constantine.
According to an online version of the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in 1844 in St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, by German scholar, Constantine Tischendorf. During the 19th century, the manuscript was split into different parts; parts which have never been published in a single edition. Today, those parts are housed at the British Library, the University of Leipzig in Germany, the National Library of Russia and at the Monastery of St. Catherine's in Egypt.
Although it originally contained the entire Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, much of the Old Testament has since been lost. The Codex is named after the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt where it was found. The monastery-which is built on the traditional site of Moses' burning bush-is one of the longest, continuously active Christian monastic communities in the world.
"The manuscript is on good parchment," states the Catholic Encyclopaedia, "the pages measure about 15 inches by 13.5 inches; there are four columns to a page, except in the poetical books, which are written stichometrically in two columns of greater width."
Project launched
An international project launched March 11, 2005 at the British Library in London, England to create a digital copy of the mid-fourth century manuscript. The project team includes scholars from the UK, Europe, Egypt, Russia and the U.S.
The venture will represent the virtual reunification of the Codex, once in digital form.
The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), one of the partners in the project, describes the Codex as, "a major resource for scholars working in a range of disciplines," and says the project, "will initiate a major campaign of scholarly research, led by the top specialists in Biblical studies."
Project plans call for conservation, digitization, transcription, translation (into English, German, Spanish and modern Greek) and scholarly commentary, and include a free to view website and a CD Rom.
The project team also hopes to produce a high-quality, bound and color-printed facsimile of the entire Codex, to enable people access to a life-like copy of the original.
World's oldest Bible to be available to all
The collaborative effort will thus make the Codex Sinaiticus available to people of all ages and levels of interest.
The fragile, vellum pages of the ancient book are to be scanned, "using a technique called hyperspectral imaging," according to a recent article in The Economist; a technology originally designed to be used for medical purposes. The digitized end product will be a high-resolution copy, allowing scholars, "to examine the numerous corrections and overwritings in the text."
Previously, scholars had to rely on imperfect transcriptions and facsimiles when studying the ancient document as, due to its extreme age and fragility, none of the four institutions presently holding portions of the Codex allows access to the manuscript beyond display in a glass case.
One report cites the curator for classical, Byzantine and biblical manuscripts at the British Library as saying only four researchers in the past 20 years have been allowed access to the parts of the Codex housed there.
"This project will bring this text to millions of people around the world," said SBL executive director, Kent Richards.
The endeavour, one of the first of its kind, is expected to take four years to complete at an estimated cost of over $1.5 million.
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